Elastomer coated roils play an important role in various technical branches. The high stresses in the elastomeric layer and their partial failure lead not only to insufficient quality of She production process, but can also frequently destroy the whole rolling system completely This article describes the mechanical behaviour of a two-roll system. Numerical and experimental methods are utilized in order to establish an engineering approach for the design of such systems. The various stages of a design procedure will be presented which allows to determine the pa rameters important for the performance of this system, e. g. nip width or nip pressure, taking into account the geometrical and physical nonlinearities of the material behaviour The design procedure is explained using the example of a specific roll pairing. The numerical and analytical results are verified by experiments.